In Chester still. I climb these steep steps alone. They have
all gone, all passed by. Buck went with Mr. C. Hampton to York. Mary, Mrs.
Huger, and Pinckney took flight together. One day just before they began to
dissolve in air, Captain Gay was seated at the table, halfway between me on the
top step and John in the window, with his legs outside. Said some one to-day, “She
showed me her engagement ring, and I put it back on her hand. She is engaged,
but not to me.” “By the heaven that is above us all, I saw you kiss her hand.” “That
I deny.” Captain Gay glared in angry surprise, and insisted that he had seen
it. “Sit down, Gay,” said the cool captain in his most mournful way. “You see,
my father died when I was a baby, and my grandfather took me in hand. To him I
owe this moral maxim. He is ninety years old, a wise old man. Now, remember my
grandfather's teaching forevermore — ‘A gentleman must not kiss and tell.’”
General Preston came to say good-by. He will take his family
abroad at once. Burnside, in New Orleans, owes him some money and will pay it. “There
will be no more confiscation, my dear madam,” said he; “they must see that we
have been punished enough.” “They do not think so, my dear general. This very
day a party of Federals passed in hot pursuit of our President.”
A terrible fire-eater, one of the few men left in the world
who believe we have a right divine, being white, to hold Africans, who are
black, in bonds forever; he is six feet two; an athlete; a splendid specimen of
the animal man; but he has never been under fire; his place in the service was
a bomb-proof office, so-called. With a face red-hot with rage he denounced Jeff
Davis and Hood. “Come, now,” said Edward, the handsome, “men who could fight
and did not, they are the men who ruined us. We wanted soldiers. If the men who
are cursing Jeff Davis now had fought with Hood, and fought as Hood fought,
we'd be all right now.”
And then he told of my trouble one day while Hood was here. “Just
such a fellow as you came up on this little platform, and before Mrs. Chesnut
could warn him, began to heap insults on Jeff Davis and his satrap, Hood. Mrs.
Chesnut held up her hands. ‘Stop, not another word. You shall not abuse my
friends here! Not Jeff Davis behind his back, not Hood to his face, for he is
in that room and hears you.’” Fancy how dumfounded this creature was.
Mrs. Huger told a story of Joe Johnston in his callow days
before he was famous. After an illness Johnston's hair all fell out; not a hair
was left on his head, which shone like a fiery cannon-ball. One of the
gentlemen from Africa who waited at table sniggered so at dinner that he was
ordered out by the grave and decorous black butler. General Huger, feeling for
the agonies of young Africa, as he strove to stifle his mirth, suggested that
Joe Johnston should cover his head with his handkerchief. A red silk one was
produced, and turban-shaped, placed on his head. That completely finished the
gravity of the butler, who fled in helplessness. His guffaw on the outside of
the door became plainly audible. General Huger then suggested, as they must
have the waiter back, or the dinner could not go on, that Joe should eat with
his hat on, which he did.
SOURCES: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin
and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 382-3
